Topic: Ldap

[Thomas G Christensen]

Yes i have searched the Forun have searched the HowTo

but cant finde info on how to be able to add contacts
from the server or from the client
if that is posible without adding them as users
the users i have addes dont show either

i use outlook XP

have acces to the directory  though it is empty  cant finde anything on a search

have another ldap confed to and that works  so it is not outlook


can anyone give a hint ???   please

Regards Thomas G Christensen

[michael]

I did get it to work with Netscape, struggled forever to make it work with any Outlook (Express). It simply doesn't work with Microsoft Outlook (express).
The reasons why are illusive to me, maybe someone else can answer that.

[Michael Maggard]

Some background:

(I did a fair amount of research on LDAP a few years ago then again last year - I welcome any additions/corrections. Unfortunately my notes are in another country at the moment so I’m forced to be light on names & URLs. However I hope this’ll be of some use, particularly to folks just browsing.)

LDAP consists of two parts - the Server and the Client. The server portion holds any set of “directory” information (can be used in lots of ways) and obviously the client reads it. Directories might be user accounts, address book entries, network entities, even system and OS components.

The OpenLDAP server in SME is pretty much the standard one; there are other proprietary ones but OpenLDAP is the baseline and none work particularly different.

However the first bit of stickiness comes with the Clients. There are lots of clients but in this case we’re talking about “Contacts” and such so that means an Address Book-type situation such as in email.

Unfortunately while lots of email clients can query LDAP servers for fairly strict sets of information few make particularly good use of LDAP as a general-purpose Address Book, especially in the browse-a-name-from-a-list/get-a-phone-number-and-email-address style of interaction.

Mozilla/Netscape is one of the better email clients, likely due to the fact that there’ve been Netscape-branded “iPlanet” LDAP servers sold for years. I’m told Eudora is good too (makes sense as they’ve been giving away an assemble-it-yourself LDAP server for years.) On the other hand MS Outlook Express is pretty weak and MS Outlook can only do very limited queries.

(In case anyone is wondering at the difference in MS clients it’s because aside from a boneheaded marketing move MS Outlook and MS Outlook Express have nothing in common beyond the name - indeed they’re from entirely different divisions at MS and have almost no code in common.)

The next stickiness is the issue of loading and maintaining your LDAP material. As you’ve discovered it’s a pretty esoteric field requiring creating LDIF files and the like from confusingly written cookbooks. There are tools out there but most aren’t free and none seem to be of the “master-in-15-minutes” caliber.

The high cost corporate servers do come with decent documentation, lots of examples and some lovely GUI parts but there’s no magic “use this” tool out there for free right now. (I did come across some promising ones though and when I get back to my notes in a few weeks I’ll be more then happy to post pointers to them.)

So if you’re hoping to trivially set up a nice LDAP Directory and rely on it as a universal Address Book then yeah, that’s the goal and no, it’s really not practical at the moment. A few email clients out there can write to it, a few more can use it as an address book, and yet more will query it as a last-resort to look up unknown addresses but overall it’s apparently still ugly and uneven in this application.

The story is better on the directory-services side where LDAP is proving invaluable for user management (Active Directory-LDAP-NDS-NIS), coordinating single-login systems, and as an intermediary between various ERP/HRM/Accounting/Payroll/Employee Services-type applications. Of course these all involve bringing in folks who’re well familiar with LDAP and charge $ accordingly.

The home of OpenLDAP:
> http://www.openldap.org

Primers:
> http://www.onlamp.com/topics/linux/ldap
> http://jaba.startcom.org:4080/howto/OpenLDAP.xml

Tools and useful links:
> http://ldap.akbkhome.com
> http://www.iit.edu/~gawojar/ldap/
> http://www.ldapadministrator.com/main/main.php

[Michael Maggard]

Thomas G Christensen wrote:
>
> Yes i have searched the Forun have searched the HowTo
>
> but cant finde info on how to be able to add contacts
> from the server or from the client
> if that is posible without adding them as users
> the users i have addes dont show either

I just came across a package that would significantly aid LDAP Adress Book creation: “Rolodap”.

From:
> http://rolodap.sourceforge.net

Rolodap is an open source database for storing an organization's contacts information.  It uses PHP and LDAP. Rolodap has easy to use web interfaces.

Features include :

• Usable in LDAP enabled emailers like Netscape, Eudora, or Outlook
• No special client software needed-- just a web browser and emailer
• Stores information such as notes, telephone, postal address
• Display of most common information in scrollable tabular form
• Supports creating wordprocessor merge files of postal addresses
• Simple search by user definable categories such as "customers", "courts", "suppliers" or "my contacts"
• Detailed search on any information
• Scalable
• Exports data to csv files for use in any WordProcessor for document merges.
• Exports data to csv files formated so that they can be imported into Palm based PDA's (and possibly others)
• Mailing feature that allow users to send highly customizable emails (the emails can contain field codes for names, addresses, etc so each message is customizable) to groups contacts, without each of the recipients knowing who the other recipients are.
• Themable color schemes that are easy to add schemes to
• Options to search other LDAP databases directly from the Rolodap interface.

Looks like this might make setting up an LDAP Address-Book a trivial project.

[Thomas G Christensen]

THANX